The last week I’ve needed ear plugs outside. Listening to all the cicadas which are making sounds like a number of vehicles with broken water pumps grates on the nerves after a while. The hooligans have been stinking to high heaven from rolling around on the dead ones.

My daylilies started blooming Sunday and my Japanese iris and oriental lilies are also in bloom. One called ‘Tiger Eye’ is still in pots waiting to go into my Auburn area underneath my Auburn welcome sign. I’ll do separate posts on the Japanese iris and lilies later. I normally don’t buy petunias since moving back to the farm. I had trouble with deer eating them and also ranunculus so I stopped planting them. With the hooligans around I thought I’d try them again.

There are several new varieties out this year. One called Lime bicolor has huge blooms almost 4 inches across. I got another one a pastel one with Antique in the name also has a large bloom. I didn’t realize the pot I purchased didn’t have a plant tag on it. I’ll have to go back to Malone’s and get the name of it and will post a picture of it when it gets a new bloom. A few new ones, Black velvet, Pinstripe and Phantom are so deep purple they look black.

I also found a strange plant coming up out of the ground. I think it might be a morel mushroom or something like that. It’s just peeping out of the ground. I’ll check back each day as it comes up and post more pictures of it. I may need help with its identification. In a couple of pictures, you’ll notice a couple of Christmas amaryllis that has been delegated to the garden. I got tired several years ago of them flopping over so I gave them the opportunity to enjoy the outdoors and they took advantage of it.

Check out my GRIT magazine blog post for Mother’s Day. If you can’t guess, it’s about my Mom and the time she spent in concentration camp as a child during World War II.